Pineal - ID# 417

Deerfield

Dramatic Narrative

Entry Description

A young disillusioned man unexectedly experiences clairvoyance. These powers bring him solace, but not before time and space collapse before his eyes.

Recent Teacher Comments

• 3/5 7:16 pm - You have a tremendous skill at cinematography, and getting those shots that draw your audience in. I loved all the natural sounds you pulled in throughout. You have a great skill of not overdoing any of it. You also were very good at compressing time, showing me key scenes and letting my brain fill in the rest while you moved on with the video. It really was great - you have not just mastered the skill of it all, but also the art. That all being said my class and I watched it several times trying to figure out what the story was, we went around and came up with several theories and one of them might have been right but your story wasn’t obvious to any of us as we tried to fit it all together (and your audience shouldn’t have to work that hard to figure it out). While it might be perfectly clear to you, the first time viewer had a hard time with it (30 of us, after several views). Work on your story telling, making it clear and you have a perfect 10.
• 3/2 2:55 pm - Things I liked: I like some of your cinematography in your opening sequence. I like the fairly sophisticated set up of the issue of clairvoyance or precognition. I like the drone shot. I like the exterior shot later in the film of the road and your actor on his skateboard. And I thought your music was appropriate, effective, and properly adjusted. Things I didn’t like as much: most of your low light shots, your focus, your very yellow white balance, your overuse of handheld shots, and your lack of identifiable plot. You’ve got some ability and demonstrate competent editing skills, but I didn’t follow you story in this particular project and ended up quite bored. I’m sure there’s meaning behind the watch in the cereal, and his missing watch the next morning or whatever, but it ended up seeming more like a cinematography reel of a kid who likes to shoot skateboarding videos and has a friend with a drone.
• 2/25 11:05 am - STORY: Where were you going with this? At first, based on your titles, I thought that he was going to predict his own death. Then when he went out on his skateboard, I was excited because I thought he'd get hit by a car. Nothing happened. Literally that whole scene had no relevance to the relationship with the pineal gland that you established in your titles. We watched this 3 times and it still didn't resemble a storyline with a beginning, climax, and conclusion. Even in non-linear storytelling, a story must have a character with a conflict and a conclusion (Memento, Pulp Fiction, etc.) This lacked the essential elements of a story. The more I watched it, the more I started to think that you developed a story about a disillusioned guy and then just used a bunch of old skate and snowboard footage to tie it into your idea. SOUND: Your sound was great. Nice mix of ambient sound, sound effects, and music. No dialogue or voice over - these elements might have helped clarify the story you were trying to tell. CAMERA: Nicely shot opening - great shot of the clock, and the short dream clips were great (that snow shot was on point!) BUT, your focus is soft on a lot of the shots from the moment he wakes up. Shallow depth of focus can be cool in filmmaking, but not if you lose focus on your subject. A lot of your handheld camera work is shaky; that would be okay for scenes that are meant to be frantic or intense, but not okay for scenes that are supposed to be less dramatic. Plus, in your shakiness you end up cutting off your subject's head a LOT. When he looked up through the trees into the sky, you sat on that blurry shot for a long time before racking focus. Why? How did that help the story? LIGHTING: The opening shots of him waking up from the dream are intentionally dark, because the character was in bed. BUT...after he wakes up and he's getting ready, you need lighting. ALL of those shots were soft and pixelated because you didn't have enough light. Some of the other shots in the kitchen and office were lit nicely, but the skateboarding sequence outside was underexposed; if you don't have enough available light from the sun, your image will suffer (no matter how much color correction you add in post-production...and yes, we noticed your saturation levels were off the charts). EDITING: Edits were clean, but you could have done SO much more with the dream sequence and then tie it into your concept of his pineal gland/intuition/precognition.

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Judge 2

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Judge 3

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Judge 4

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